


If at First You Don't Succeed

by Tierfal



Category: Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 20:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>…try again.  Fail better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If at First You Don't Succeed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [callunavulgari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/gifts).



> Christmas fic for the beautiful, brilliant, fantasmic Heather. ♥♥♥ (Hopefully it'll tide you over until your birthday present gets mailed out ~~because I SUCK~~! ♥)
> 
> For bonus points: this could be a prequel to [the crossover from two years ago](http://archiveofourown.org/works/370050), if anyone is inclined; and if anyone is inclined to wonder whether Mello and Ed would get along famously, last year [answered that one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/595393). XD''

“I don’t know about this, Mel,” Matt says.

“Don’t fucking say that,” Mello says. “It always goes wrong when you do. You’re like a walking jinx.”

“I think maybe you’re making that correlation backwards,” Matt says.

“At least I don’t draw arrays upside-down.”

“Maybe if you weren’t always stealing the books _while I’m reading them_ so that I can only _see_ them upside-down.”

Mello has one graceful hand splayed on the parchment, and he looks back and forth between it and his sketch before he adds another careful line. “It’s not my fault you have shitty reflexes.”

“It _is_ your fault I have trust issues.”

Mello’s eyes narrow to little slits of ice-blue as he draws another curve on the array. “No, it’s your parents’ fault you have trust issues.”

Matt stares open-mouthed.

Mello glances up at him and frowns. “What?”

Words are insufficient, so Matt just climbs up onto the table and tackles Mello out of his chair. All of the paper on the desk crinkles under his knees, and half of it spirals down and crumples on the floor, and as he and Mello are rolling around making halfhearted attempts to knock each other’s teeth out, they somehow both end up flattening a palm on the array at the same time, and—

Well, everyone’s eyebrows _eventually_ grow back.

 

 

Two years later, in the Academy mess hall, Matt is having some _serious_ déjà-vu.

He clears his throat loudly. “I don’t know about th—”

“I _told_ you not to _say_ that,” Mello says. “Near got it to work. So we’re going to.”

“Hang on,” Matt says. He fumbles around in all of his pockets, manages to find the sheet in the fifth one he tries, and quickly adds up the tally marks. “Sixteen,” he says.

Mello doesn’t look up from the array. “Sixteen what?”

“Sixteen times you’ve said ‘Near did it, let’s do it,’” Matt says, “and bad things happened.”

“Nothing bad is going to happen this time,” Mello says.

“How come you’re allowed to jinx it, and I’m not?” Matt asks.

Mello looks up just enough to glower at him. “I didn’t _jinx_ i—”

“Jeevas and Keehl!” the rumbling voice of _doom_ that haunts Matt’s waking hours as well as his nightmares thunders from above. “What the hell is this?”

“Nothing, sir!” they say in unison.

They also jump up out from the mess hall benches in unison, snap one hand up to salute Lieutenant Vargas in unison, and slam their free hands down on the array in unison.

Then they scream at _exactly_ the same time.

When Matt wakes up in the hospital and sees the bandages all over his arm and Mello’s face, he figures they should at least get a medal for the _synchronized_ shit. Isn’t that a big deal in the army, or something?

 

 

Two years after that, Mello has a brainstorm.

This time, they’re holed up in a supply closet on the fifth floor of Southern Command, supporting Matt’s longstanding theory that there ain’t no party like a Mello party, depending on your understanding of the word ‘party’ and your regard for your personal safety.

“Listen up,” Mello says, spreading the paper out on the questionable floor between them where they sit uncomfortably cross-legged in the stiff uniforms.  “I figured out the solution.”

He gives Matt a hard, assessing look and then holds out his right hand.

Matt looks at Mello’s graphite-smeared fingertips, and then at the faint scars along his cheek and his jaw that he grew out and layered his hair just to hide—like they change something; like they make him less breathtaking at the worst of times. Like they matter at all.

Ha.  _Matt_ er.

Well, Matt’s fresh out of possible explanations for this scenario; all of the ones in his head are too ludicrous even to voice.

“What do you want me to do?” he says.

“Grab my _hand_ ,” Mello says in the tones of one speaking to a group of children and/or imbeciles.  “It’s not rocket science, Mattie.  If both of our hands are out of the way, we can’t accidentally activate it this time.  _Obviously_.”

Matt swallows.  He’s gotten to the point in his modest, quiet little life where he’s accepted that he _always_ wants to take Mello’s hand and hold it to his chest and trace every nail and learn every knuckle and smooth every torn cuticle; and he’s also made his peace with the fact that Mello lives in a universe just _slightly_ off-kilter from his—a parallel plane of fiascoes and firebrands, where every little thing that happens is _important_ and well worth getting worked up over.  People from Matt’s little world do not generally contact people from Mello’s, and when they do, usually the Mello People gloriously descend as some sort of semi-angelic presence. Although in Mello’s specific case there’s a lot of swearing involved.

The other problem is that something in him melts into trembling goo whenever Mello calls him Mattie.  So he’s sort of at a crossroads of patheticness right now.

“I,” he says slowly, “don’t know if that’s a good ide—”

“ _Matt_ ,” Mello says, with the unambiguous subtext of _Take the hand or so help me I will strangle you with it_.

“Okay,” Matt says.

So he wraps his hand around Mello’s, and he almost manages to stop it from shaking, and he marvels at the way the pencil graphite gleams like tarnished silver on the tiny ridges of Mello’s fingerprints.  Mello lowers his head to the array again, hair swooping in to hide his face, and mutters under his breath, so Matt just sits there, in blissful torment, clasping his best friend’s wonderful, terrible hand and wondering if he’s reached the pinnacle of his own existence, and it’s okay to die now.

“ _This_ time,” Mello says.  “ _This_ time, nothing can possibly go…”

With the madness of adulation skittering in his veins, Matt’s excitement overwhelms him, and he runs the pad of his thumb lightly over Mello’s knuckles and beams his delight.

The sentence on Mello’s tongue dies or disappears or evaporates.  He’s just—staring.  At Matt.  Who stops smiling in a rush.

“What was that for?” Mello asks—in a new voice, a low voice, a voice that touches a nerve at the base of Matt’s spine and ripples through him like a shockwave.

“Uh,” Matt says.  “Just.  Uh.”  He’s a goddamn _State Alchemist_ , and not a cut-rate one, either—surely he can generate _one_ brilliant comeback to save his skin.  “Just… you… are… stunning.  When you’re inspired.”

…that did not go exactly as planned.

“I mean,” Matt says, “‘stunning’ in a… totally… platonic… wa—”

Mello yanks hard on their twined hands, and Matt lurches forward, and their mouths slam together so hard he thinks for a second he’s chipped a tooth.

It’s funny, too, because Matt’s kissed maybe more than his fair share of folks, but kissing Mello’s like the first time all over again—he feels _young_ , and clumsy, and scared, and stupid, and fantastic, and absolutely _thrilled_.  Mello’s like a shot of moonshine blazing down his throat, sizzling in his stomach, turning his brain to mush and his nerve endings to firecrackers and his whole universe to a rush of giddy _feeling_.  Mello bites down on his lip so hard he tastes _somebody’s_ blood, and their noses keep crushing up against each other, and Mello’s hair smells like the hills after rain, and their hands are knitted so tight he can feel both of their pulses pounding at once.  He wants _more_ ; he wants it _all_ ; he wants to drink in the beautiful addiction until it drowns him; he presses closer, and closer, and plants his free hand on the floor for leverage—

The array explodes.

On the upside, nobody gets a mop handle through the head.

On the downside, Mello bites through the tip of Matt’s tongue, which is both excruciatingly painful and extremely awkward to explain to the medical staff.

 

 

Two years after _that_ , Matt is penning his own signature as extravagantly as humanly possible.

“This is good,” he says to the papers on the desk, straightening the edges of the sheets. “I’m getting closure. I’m going to be able to let this go. You and I are both going to be okay.”

Mello stretches in that panther way he does. “Talking to the report won’t change the fact that it’s bullshit from start to finish.”

“Don’t listen to the detractors,” Matt tells the paper. “They don’t know you. They don’t understand. Don’t let them get you down, little guy.”

“Mattie, when was the last time you slept?”

“I forget. You?”

“Same.”

Matt scrubs a hand over his face, realizing too late that he’s probably smearing ink on himself. “Awesome.”

“You _know_ Lawliet’s going to smell the bullshit from a mile away,” Mello says.

“Sure,” Matt says, “but it doesn’t matter if he smells it unless he _calls_ it. And _jeez_ , Mel, I didn’t see you jumping up and offering to write up a detailed list of expenses for all the shit we broke in the line of duty and the pursuit of the greater good or whatever.”

Mello doodles something, itching at the faint pale marks of the scars along his cheekbone. “That’s the last time I ever stage a showdown in an antiques store.”

“Yeah,” Matt says. He pets the paper gently. “You just do your thing, little dude. What the brass don’t know won’t hurt ’em.”

“That _might_ be the dumbest thing you’ve ever said,” Mello says.

Except that Mello hasn’t heard everything Matt has ever said, and he’s said a _whole_ lot dumber while a certain stupid-gorgeous jerkoff was passed out on the other pillow, hair splayed out behind him, limbs curled in close.

The door opens.

It’s really a pity they’re both so totally fucked-up with sleep-deprivation; under other circumstances, the intention to jump up and salute sharply might have manifested as something other than two very loud collisions with the carpet, cushioned by their respective chair backs.

“Sir!” Matt calls helplessly from where he has somehow become tangled in his own sleeve.

“Ah,” Roy Mustang says, pausing in the doorway, looking more than a bit like he wishes he’d never come, “at… ease.”

Matt stops struggling with the ornery sleeve and just collapses where he fell. Mello manages to drag himself upright using the edge of the table, and then he starts scrabbling for something.

“Just—finishing up here, sir; nothing to see, nothi—”

No one ever disagrees that General Mustang has the fastest hands in Central Command—although the tone and the amount of suggestive eyebrow movement vary a lot depending on who you ask—so Matt’s not really surprised when the paper whips out of Mello’s grasp.

“What… can we do for you, General?” Mello asks, wilting visibly.

“I made a bet with your C.O.,” Mustang says, shoving a small box tied with ribbon at Mello without looking up from the sheet. “I lost. You’re going about this all wrong, you know.”

Mello has braced one arm on the edge of the table and is still managing to sway. “…the fuck?” He shakes himself. “I mean—the fuck, sir?”

Mustang rolls his eyes, flattens the paper on the desktop, takes up Mello’s pencil, and applies the eraser first. “That is _not_ the appropriate application of the phoenix. If L taught you that, I’m going to have to have a word with him.” He starts drawing. He has really nice hands, does General Mustang. Even from the angle of upside-down-on-the-floor. “There,” he says. “Try that.”

Mello pauses, which is so rare Matt wants to flail an arm at Mustang until he gets a camera. Sucks how arms are kind of too heavy right now.

“Mattie,” Mello says. “C’mere.”

“Can’t,” Matt says.

“I outrank you, asshole.”

“I _hate_ you.”

“Mattie, c’ _mon_. We started this together; we gotta finish it.”

Matt accepts the offered hand and lets Mello drag him to his feet. As one, they stagger over and slap their hands down on the altered array, under the watchful raised eyebrow of a highly superior officer.

The paper ignites at the edge and—neatly, smoothly, and altogether uncatastrophically—burns itself up into a trim little pile of ash.

“Oh,” Matt says.

“Yeah,” Mello says. “I think fucking it up was more fun.”

“I can only imagine how that ended,” Mustang says, sounding genuinely scandalized.

“In tears,” Matt says. “And sulfur. And blown-up janitorial closets.”

“Lovely,” Mustang says. “Now I can imagine in detail. Thank you for that.” He starts for the door. “Goodnight, gentlemen.”

“G’night, sir,” Matt says.

Mello waits for the door to shut before he says, “You’re such a _suck-up_.”

“Screw you,” Matt says. “Mustang’s kind of dreamy.”

“Gross,” Mello says.

“Shut _up_ ,” Matt says. “But he probably wouldn’t spring for a threesome with a coupla’ weird little alchemist streaks of nothing.”

Mello gazes contemplatively at the door. “Near says he’s fucking Fullmetal.”

Matt really doesn’t have the emotional capacity to handle revelations like this after all the crap they’ve been through this week. “No _shit_?”

Mello shrugs. They both know Near just… _knows_ … things. In a creepy kind of way.

“Huh,” Matt says.

“Yeah,” Mello says. “Hey, race you to bed—loser makes breakfast— _readygo_ —”

None too surprisingly, they bowl over General Mustang halfway down the hall, at which point Matt figures they’re probably lucky to escape with their eyeballs un-incinerated.

All in all, not a bad night.


End file.
